Smuggler Archive
Thread: Check the Dev Tracker... BF going bye-bye
There are buttons for this?
Man I knew I shouldn't have taken that 12 hour course.
LTZweigg wrote:
There are buttons for this?
Man I knew I shouldn't have taken that 12 hour course.
It's an 8 hour course. It's only 12 hours for people that are "special"
Gaitan wrote:
LTZweigg wrote:
There are buttons for this?
Man I knew I shouldn't have taken that 12 hour course.
It's an 8 hour course. It's only 12 hours for people that are "special"
rofl
Secondly.. does anyone know what BF actually does? It used to make buffs less effective, but nobody really gets buffs anymore. So what does it do? Other than make us go see an entertainer now and then when we've died a few times and we decide it's too high? What was so great about BF, again?
Entertainers need valuable skills, but they need skills that make us want to go see them, not skills that force us to go see them. (I think JFreeman may have said something along those lines, too, but just because a dev said it doesn't make it wrong. Fun gaming's about creating positive reinforcements, not negatives.) Not only that, but they need skills that make them feel like entertainers. The changes they're talking about putting in sound like they'll make entertainers feel more like the type of profession they chose to play.. and not out of financial reasons, or status-based ones, but because they want to entertain.
I'm not an entertainer, so I don't think I am speaking or can speak for them. But judging from the role they choose to take, and how I heard their summit went tonight, I do think they view most of this stuff as a good thing. I think they want to entertain in the same way we want to smuggle. Many of us have said we'd give up slicing, spice, and all the rest if only we could smuggle. I think, in a way, that's what we're seeing here: they're giving up a skill, and a useful one, but it's being replaced with skills that should both be useful and make them feel like real entertainers.
I can't find fault with that.
maxtheusher wrote:
Press Play
Not working man, might be this crappy work comp / firewall. Have to check it out when I get home.
Turd_Ferguson523 wrote:
maxtheusher wrote:
Press Play
Not working man, might be this crappy work comp / firewall. Have to check it out when I get home.
SON OF A...
none of them are. dicked around for an hour or so replying to messages with wav files, and they ALL seem to have leech-guards... BAH!
maxtheusher wrote:
Turd_Ferguson523 wrote:
maxtheusher wrote:
Press Play
Not working man, might be this crappy work comp / firewall. Have to check it out when I get home.
SON OF A...
none of them are. dicked around for an hour or so replying to messages with wav files, and they ALL seem to have leech-guards... BAH!
Know where you are coming from, did that once. Was clever as hell (at least I thought I was!
) Yeah, talk about your all time backfires. Stupid leech-guards.
TomoRainer wrote:
Ah, come on. What was so great about BF in the first place? First off, you didn't need an entertainer as a person, or an entertainer, you needed them as an object. They may as well have been an NPC. A lively, at-the-keyboard entertainer was more fun than an AFK one, but in terms of actually doing what you're there for, an afk buffbot was actually better. They can be there 24 hours a day, don't hassle you for tips, in fact don't do anything to intrude on you or your gaming. If forced interaction for the sake of force interaction is a good thing--if a simple timesink is considered "smart" game design, or that, in any event, removing it is to "dumb down" the game--the most effective entertainers are the ones that don't actually play the game. The ones, in fact, that the real entertainers, the ones at their keyboard trying to entertain us, may well consider the greatest threat to their profession.
Secondly.. does anyone know what BF actually does? It used to make buffs less effective, but nobody really gets buffs anymore. So what does it do? Other than make us go see an entertainer now and then when we've died a few times and we decide it's too high? What was so great about BF, again?
Entertainers need valuable skills, but they need skills that make us want to go see them, not skills that force us to go see them. (I think JFreeman may have said something along those lines, too, but just because a dev said it doesn't make it wrong. Fun gaming's about creating positive reinforcements, not negatives.) Not only that, but they need skills that make them feel like entertainers. The changes they're talking about putting in sound like they'll make entertainers feel more like the type of profession they chose to play.. and not out of financial reasons, or status-based ones, but because they want to entertain.
I'm not an entertainer, so I don't think I am speaking or can speak for them. But judging from the role they choose to take, and how I heard their summit went tonight, I do think they view most of this stuff as a good thing. I think they want to entertain in the same way we want to smuggle. Many of us have said we'd give up slicing, spice, and all the rest if only we could smuggle. I think, in a way, that's what we're seeing here: they're giving up a skill, and a useful one, but it's being replaced with skills that should both be useful and make them feel like real entertainers.
I can't find fault with that.
At least theatre's might become useful now if Entertainers are gonna put on plays
Remember Apprentice XP? It worked for a new game but it soon turned into one of the worst versions of forced interaction I've ever encountered. I HATED it. Heck I eventually ended up getting around it by training people over and over in Ranged Support I. That's not fun
Don't get me wrong - I think there should be an incentive to go to the Entertainers and actually socialize with them, but it should NEVER be forced. Ever. That's the type of mentality that leads to people actually HATING game companies and games.
Monthigos wrote:
With so many people in an outrage about not being able to solo (which is a bunch of rubbish because I solo all the time), you think people could appreciate the removal of any type of forced interaction.
Remember Apprentice XP? It worked for a new game but it soon turned into one of the worst versions of forced interaction I've ever encountered. I HATED it. Heck I eventually ended up getting around it by training people over and over in Ranged Support I. That's not fun
Don't get me wrong - I think there should be an incentive to go to the Entertainers and actually socialize with them, but it should NEVER be forced. Ever. That's the type of mentality that leads to people actually HATING game companies and games.
You hated it. I didn't. I was always capped, even after training my master professions simply by training people who needed it around various cities every now and then. I never had to make any noticeable effort to actually gain Apprentice XP really, and it most certainly wasn't an effort that would make me hate anyone or anything.
Why is our experience so drastically different?
"We don't want to force interaction on people."
"There are many new changes coming for entertainer, just be patient!"
*cough* Ahem. Admirable sentiments, surely, but honestly... a pile of crap. To start with, that first quote -- Freeman goodness -- is a load. Everything else in this game *forces* interaction. Perhaps not face-to-face interaction, with crafters having vendors, but regardless... the whole POINT was that everyone NEEDS someone else to progress.
Combatants need other combatants. They need healers. They need (on occasion) doctors. They need armoursmiths, and weaponsmiths, and sometimes chefs and smugglers.
They do not need fake swords or fake armour. Inspiration buffs are like giving a potato chip to a starving man -- they are a joke, a tidbit given to entertainers to hold us over until the changes come.
Granted, complaining about a lack of changes on the smuggler boards is barking up the wrong tree. I realise this. Entertainers aren't as used to it as smugglers. Entertainers don't have weapon nerfs, special-attack nerfs, armour cert nerfs (beyond not being allowed to wear it anymore, that is). All they wanted was to have a viable, USEFUL source of income and a REASON for doing their job.
Everyone else has *some* reason for performing their jobs. Remove BF and it's healing, give them crappy props, and say "people will come because they want to" and wave a nebulous promise of different buffs in the future -- nobody will come. Nobody will pay them. Entertainer missions are a joke.
They have officially bent the entertaining profession over a barrel and made it useless. Everyone else is forced to interact with everyone else, to one degree or another, but this one apparently is wasting too much time. I started this game to be a dancer. I still am, to a small degree, and (/admit shamefully) I'll be picking up more again in the near future to aid my glowbat grind.
But I'd been saying for a long time that when I am done, and dancing is the first prof I'll give up in favour of FS skills, that I will miss dancing. And my alt, though gods only know why, will remain an entertainer as she is now. But with these changes... I'm sorry, with these removal of skills, I will not miss my favourite profession when it is gone. I will likely sigh with relief to surrender those skills.
I will continue to mourn the death of my most loved profession, but (and this is coming from someone would rather roleplay than grind) wasting my time, and skill points, on something that no longer has any viable purpose is not in my best interests.
It is a slow, painful death. Two years from now, the vets will look back and say, ".... oh, dancers? I remember those." and the noobs will have no idea.
/rant off